Ranking the 5 biggest stars the Cubs traded away over the years

As the trade deadline approaches, let’s look back at the biggest stars the Chicago Cubs have sent packing over the years.

As Willson Contreras familiarizes himself with the real estate market in San Diego, it might be a good time to look at other great Cubs the team has traded away over the years. These aren’t the worst trades the Cubs have made, but rather trades involving players who established themselves as stars with the Cubs. In this post, the numbers in parentheses are WAR totals are from Fangraphs, and reflect each player’s WAR with the Cubs.

#5: 1981 – RHP Rick Reuschel (47.0) to the New York Yankees for RHP Doug Bird (1.1) and RHP Mike Griffin (0.7)

Even by the Cubs’ historical standards, the 1981 squad was a bad one. They wouldn’t get their tenth win until May 30. Rick Reuschel would pitch his last game for this ill-chosen assortment of players on June 10. Two days later, on the same day the players decided to strike, the Cubs sent Reuschel east for $400,000 of George Steinbrenner’s cash and two guys. The team tried to make this sound like smart roster development, but it was mainly a salary dump.

Cubs fans were outraged, and not without reason; a franchise icon had just been sent to a team powered by the fires of hell. But spare a thought for Doug Bird, who through no fault of his own wound up at the business end of the fans’ ire. He actually had a decent season for the Cubs in the second half of 1981’s ridiculous split schedule, though he cratered the following year.

After missing the 1982 season because of rotator cuff surgery, Reuschel would return to the Cubs and pitch in limited duty for the next two seasons. He would rejuvenate his career in Pittsburgh, before moving on to San Francisco and pitching well enough to earn Cy Young consideration at age 40. He’s a remarkable and too often overlooked pitcher.

#4: 1973 – RHP Fergie Jenkins (53.6) to the Texas Rangers for 3B Bill Madlock (11.1) and UT Vic Harris (-2.6)

For all their star power and the fond memories they generate for those of us of a certain age, the Leo Durocher-led Cubs never finished closer to a pennant than five games out. Durocher was sent packing in 1972 and The Great Dismantlement began not long thereafter.  After the 1973 season, when Jenkins put up by far the worst ERA of his career to that point (a still very respectable 3.89) the Cubs shipped him across the border to the Republic of Texas in exchange for dynamic young infielder Bill Madlock.

Easily the best trade piece the team received in any of the deals you will read about in this post, Madlock would go on to have three very good years before his salary demands and fractious relationship with the Cubs’ antiquated ownership and front office would see him dispatched to San Francisco. Jenkins would return to the Windy City in 1981 and pitch for two more seasons. Like Reuschel he put in a pretty full shift at age 40, though the results weren’t quite as impressive.

#3: 1974 – LF Billy Williams (58.9) to the Oakland A’s for LHP Darold Knowles (2.1), RHP Bob Locker (1.0), and 2B Manny Trillo (0.8)

As The Great Dismantlement continued the Cubs did Williams a solid, trading him to the pennant contending A’s at the end of the 1974 season. Williams had 10-5 rights, meaning he had to approve the trade (and did); we’ll discuss these more in connection with the Ron Santo trade that’s coming up.

Williams would never make it to a World Series. The A’s went quietly to the Red Sox in the 1975 ALCS, scoring just seven runs over the three game sweep. Williams himself was 0-for-7 with a walk, but at least he got a taste of the postseason before he hung up his spikes. And he had a very productive regular season, with an OPS of .760 and OPS+ of 116 over a durable 602 plate appearances.

#2: 2005 – RF Sammy Sosa (60.7) to the Baltimore Orioles for 2B Mike Fontenot (4.1), UT Jerry Hairston (1.7), and RHP Dave Crouthers (minors)

“The whole persona of him smiling, well, he turned into a pretty big piece of crap.” “If you create a Frankenstein monster, you can’t be real surprised if he eats the village.”

Reuschel, Jenkins, Williams, Santo … you’d have to hire a very good P.I. to uncover a Cubs fan that has much bad to say about any of those guys. Not so for Sammy Sosa, who hopped aboard Icarus Airlines without reading the fine print. Those quotes above are from this long 2005 ESPN piece on the rise and (mostly) fall of Sammy Sosa.

The identity of the Cub who smashed Sosa’s infamous boombox on the last day of the 2004 season remains a secret: Ryan Dempster probably knows, but he’s not saying. What isn’t a secret is that by 2004 many people throughout the Cubs organization were beginning to conclude that Sosa’s costs exceeded his benefits. The very length of the ESPN story speaks to the volume of adverse information numerous Cubs sources were willing – indeed eager – to unload.

That said, Sosa was a very productive player. Baseball players are paid to produce wins, and Sosa produced 60, a Hall of Fame-ish total. There’s a good chance his plaque would be in there now, and that the ESPN piece never would have been written, if not for the PED scandal. Sosa never admitted using them; the only public evidence linking him to PEDs is one leaked test result from 2003. Whatever one thinks of Sosa, hammering him while ignoring the forces that made him possible seems short-sighted at best. However, even if he didn’t use, Sosa still did plenty to author his own demise; it isn’t hard to see why the franchise treats him like a cat treats a bath.

Given the unfavorable context in which the trade took place, the Cubs’ return wasn’t that bad. Both Fontenot and Hairston would provide some help to the roster, though each was generally overmatched as a lineup regular. Crouthers – a promising young arm – would never reach The Show, done in by the yips.  There are regions of the distant universe that we understand better than regions of the human mind. Credit to Crouthers for being open about his struggles; the worst thing about anxiety is thinking it happens to no one else.

#1: 1973 – 3B Ron Santo (71.9) to the Chicago White Sox for RHP Steve Stone (4.5), LHP Ken Frailing (2.0), C Steve Swisher (0.2), and LHP Jim Kremmel (0.0)

Don’t you miss the good old days of baseball labor strife? (Oh … right.) Anyway, as the result of the 1972 players’ strike, MLB agreed to the 10-5 rule, which allows players who have been in the majors for ten years and at least five with the same team to veto a proposed trade. Santo was the first player to invoke the rule, vetoing a trade to the Angels and thus denying thousands of Chicago area kids the opportunity to buy Andy Hassler jerseys.

Santo wanted to stay in Chicago, so he travelled down I-94 to Old Comiskey in exchange for the swag listed above. It was a sad end to an outstanding career. Santo slashed .221/.293/.299, leading him to suffer his only negative WAR season. The Cubs got three solid seasons (and a future broadcasting gig) from Steve Stone, whose best years still lay ahead of him in Baltimore. And nominative determinists out there (you know who you are) can’t help but love Steve Swisher, who struck out a healthy seven percent more than the league during his career.